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<title>html2ps/html2pdf requirements</title>
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<h1>html2ps/pdf requirements</h1>
<p><a href="index.html">Back to table of contents</a></p>

<h2>Required:</h2>
<ol>
<li>PHP 4.1.0 or newer (PHP 5 is supported)</li>
<li>
native PHP <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/ref.domxml.php" title="DOM XML documentation and installation instructions">DOM XML</a> 
<em>OR</em> 
<a href="http://www.active-link.com/software/" title="Active-Link DOM XML download page">Active-Link DOM XML</a> extension installed</li>

<li>
<a href="http://php.net/manual/en/ref.image.php" title="PHP image functions documentation">GD PHP Image Extension</a>, version 2.0.28 or newer. 
Note that you <em>may</em> use GD starting with version 2.0.1, but you will lack GIF support.</li>
</ol>
<p> If your system satisfies this requirements, you will be able to generate <em>uncompressed</em> 
  Postscript files. Use <a href="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/" title="More about GhostView">GhostView</a> 
  or any other Postscript viewer to view/print these files. Note that <em>Acrobat 
  Reader cannot read Poscript files!</em>
<p>
Also, use native DOM XML PHP extension if possible. 

<h2>Highly recommended:</h2>
<ol>
  <li><a href="http://php.net/manual/en/ref.zlib.php" title="Zlib documentation and installation instructions">Zlib</a> 
    PHP extension -- allows compressed Postscript file generation. Compression 
    greatly reduces the generated file size, up to 5-7 times, saving significant 
    bandwidth.</li>
  <li><a href="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/" title="Ghostscript download page">Ghostscript</a> 
    version 7.05 or newer -- allows generation of PDF files (strictly speaking, 
    script generates Postscript file, then converts it to PDF using Ghostscript). 
    <em>Please note that you'll need to have the ghostscript fonts package intalled 
    in order for this conversion to work!</em>. Also, keep in mind that Ghostscript 
    is an external program, so you'll need to have the <em>exec function enabled</em> 
    in your PHP configuration; if you're using PHP in safe mode, it is probably 
    disabled. It might be disabled even if safe mode is not in use. Please check 
    with your system administrator regarding the availability of the <i>exec</i> 
    function. </li>
  <li><a href="http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pdf.php" title="PDFLIB PHP extension documentation and installation instructions">PDFLIB</a> 
    -- allows direct PDF generation; in general, PDF files generated via PDFLIB 
    have better image quality and renders a little bit faster than PDFs created 
    using Ghostscript. Nevertheless, PDFLIB is a non-free library, so you'll probably 
    will need to buy a license for it.</li>

</ol>
<p>If your system satisfies this requirements, you will be able to generated both 
  Postscript and PDF files.
<p>Note: You can choose either Ghostscript or PDFLIB (or both). Only one of these 
  packages is needed for PDF generation. Another option is to use the FPdf libraries, 
  which are bundled with html2ps/pdf. Using this method to generate PDFs is slower, 
  but does not require external libraries.
<h2>Recommended:</h2>
<ol>
  <li><a href="http://ru.php.net/manual/en/ref.iconv.php" title="Iconv documentation and installation instructions">iconv</a> 
    PHP extension -- allows faster and more stable HTML page conversion from different 
    charsets (you can ignore this requirement if the pages you're working with 
    do not contain non-iso-8859-1 symbols -- central european or cyrillic, for 
    example)</li>
</ol>
<p>Systems satisfying these recommended requirements will have a minor boost in 
  conversion speed. 
<h2>Recommended PHP configuration settings:</h2>
<ol>
<li>PHP Memory limit should be set to 32-62 megabytes;</li>
<li>PHP Script time execution limit should be set to 2-3 minutes;</li>
</ol>
<p>Systems NOT satisfying these requirements MAY be not able to process complicated 
  pages with big images. The exact values of these variables should be determined 
  experimentally (trial and error).</p>

<h2>Client-side software:</h2>
<ol>
  <li> <a href="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/" title="Ghostscript download page">Ghostscript</a> 
    version 7.05 or newer and <a href="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/" title="GSView download page">GSView</a> 
    -- to view generated compressed and uncompressed files and to convert them 
    to PDF on the client side.</li>
  <li> <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/matrix.html" title="Adobe Acrobat download page">Adobe 
    Acrobat Distiller</a> -- to convert Postscript files to PDF on the client 
    size (Ghostscript alternative). </li>
  <li> <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html" title="Adobe Acrobar Reader download page">Adobe 
    Acrobat Reader</a> -- to view PDF files.</li>
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